I'm doing it real slow... September: 75% caffeine to 25% decaf; October was 66% caffeinated to 33% decaf; November is 50:50. I switched from 75% caffeinated to 50% in July or early August and was so fatigued that I was barely functional... I switched back to 75% caffeinated and it was like a switch had been thrown!!! Over the summer, when I was on holiday in the UK with my family, I just had normal coffee so I had to start all over again when we came back...

But the lesson I learnt was that my caffeine dependency was pretty high and that if I wanted to go off caffeine, I needed to do it slowly, otherwise I would crash again. This time I haven't had - so far at least - any of these major episodes of fatigue, so I'm hoping that scaling down from 66% caffeine to 50% caffeine won't be a major shock to my system!!!

I have noticed that I am no longer so caffeine dependent because I can now function on two cups of Earl Grey tea for a lot longer in the morning than I used to.

Sorry about hijacking your journal for this, CathyB, hope you don't mind!

amanda